Answers From The Ruins Lechauweki Springs Hotel Offered Fresh Air, Parties And The Promise Of A Cure

August 09, 1992|by RICH HARRY

They had fled to the Fountain Hill countryside to escape yet another broiler of a summer -- folks from New York and Philadelphia and Allentown enticed by the promise of cool nights, fresh air, lavish parties and, for some, the mineral spring water said to cure even the nastiest intestinal ill.

The woods are empty now, quiet. Fire destroyed Lechauweki Springs Hotel more than 100 years ago, its foundations smothered by grass and weeds and sod beneath trees that block out the world.

Perched on a slope southwest of town, the resort was a popular vacation spot in the late 19th Century, before fire struck.

Little information remains about Lechauweki Springs, whose owners borrowed the Indian word for the nearby Lehigh River. Its brief history is documented in old newspaper articles such as the one published in 1876 that said of the resort, "The location is on Lehigh Mountain, one mile from Bethlehem, and the healthfulness of the vicinity cannot be surpassed east of the Mississippi."

Dr. David Small wants to know more. Small, a Lehigh University archaeologist, has been heading an excavation project designed to get answers from the ruins. Artifacts recovered by Small and his seven students include pottery shards, animal bones and charred building materials. The digging is being done at the request of Fountain Hill officials, who want to develop the woods into a park as part of the borough's 100th anniversary celebration next year. The excavation is expected to be continued next summer.

Just as important as the artifacts, parts of five stone walls -- the suspected remains of one of three buildings that had housed guests -- have been discovered by the students on a hillside. The walls and artifacts found near them could provide valuable information needed to meet one of Small's research goals -- to reconstruct an activity that had been done at Lechauweki Springs.

"We think this might be a kitchen area," Small says as two students scrape at ground that already has yielded animal ribs, a ham steak bone and pieces of wine goblets and tableware.

The tableware, which has been particularly abundant, includes white china. "We thought that a fancy resort like this would have used fine, delicate china," says Small. "But they were using very medium-grade stuff."

The location of the shards -- a few feet from the walls -- "tells us that they were throwing away these things quite close to the hotel," says Small, walking by square excavation units dug out of the hillside by his students.

"It's kind of interesting," he says, "because you would think the owners would have had it thrown some distance from the hotel. It shows that 19th Century attitudes about garbage were quite different than our own attitudes today."

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What's having to put up with a little garbage when you could eat Lechauweki's meals?

George Hoppes, the manager, was said to have put out a fine menu, one matched in anticipation by the dances he had begun on Wednesday and Saturday nights in the summer of 1875. The popularity of the resort began to soar at this time.

"The music," wrote one local columnist, "was furnished by Ricksecker's Germania Orchestra of Bethlehem, and was excellent. The dancing was entered into with much spirit by the young people, and even those not so young ... " Older dancers "seemed to have some oil of youth poured into their joints, and they danced -- as well as they could -- and enjoyed themselves hugely."

Construction of the resort was begun in the early 1870s by John Smylie, owner of a nearby factory called Shive Governor Works. Smylie hired as hostess a Mrs. Houser, described in the May 2, 1872 Daily Times of Bethlehem as "the best housekeeper in the state." Beginning in 1876 the resort, which up to then had operated summers only, opened its doors year-round. In August 1876, 140 people had checked in. A horse-drawn coach, lemon in color with a silk crimson interior, had shuttled patrons from Bethlehem to the resort.

The buildings, of Victorian architecture, had a capacity of 120. Each building had three floors and wraparound porches. The bedrooms were said to be large and airy. Private cottages were nearby. Three observatories placed on the side of the mountain gave visitors views of the surrounding countryside. For all this, guests paid, in 1875, $2.50 each day, and $12.50 each week, in May and June. In July and August, the lodging fees jumped to $3 each day, and $15 each week.

The large main building -- presumably the one where the stone walls have been found -- was built midway up a slope covered with ferns and wildflowers. A second, smaller building was nearby. Below the slope stood the third building. Near it was a spring, still flowing. The water had flowed through three large ponds, which were filled with trout and arranged in a way that allowed the water to cascade as it passed through. The water emptied into a small lake, an arbor in its center.